It's not licensed. If it was licensed under some kind of open source/public license there would be absolutely no problem with this as long as they follow whatever license that is (assuming MIT or similar. If they decided to go with a non-commercial license, then that brings its own problems). Open source projects get used in commercial work all the time.

It not being licensed at all means it's under the default copyright license, which means it should not be redistributed, used in commercial work without consent of the original creator, or modified as per the standard copyright agreement. Atlus/SEGA literally do not have permission to use it and include it with their release.

The OP that is literally one tweet with one paragraph? Yes, I damn well read it. :D Exactly what part of the OP answers my question? What makes the developers of these tools "fans", and fans of what, specifically?

Bolded doesn't really matter. Even if they did credit the creators it would still be illegal.

You see, that's the thing: It's not 'bad' or 'morally incorrect' to use open source code like this, it's straight up illegal with a lot of precedents. But yeah, it's proabbly not goin anywhere in this case in particular.

The OP that is literally one tweet with one paragraph? Yes, I damn well read it. :D Exactly what part of the OP answers my question? What makes the developers of these tools "fans", and fans of what, specifically?

Fans in the sense they use these tools for game modding, assets extraction etc. they are inteded for people that doesn't have the means to use official CriWare tools.
Fan: like not a corporation making money out of it.

As for why the port shop used the tool instead an official CriWare tool: the tool on github might have worked better. Maybe the official tool was obtuse and the documentation only in Japanese, who knows.

To everyone that pointed out to me that no license means pretty protective license: thanks! Learned something new today. I do suppose that by uploading it to github the author's intent was to share it with anybody, but that's an assumption.

Bolded doesn't really matter. Even if they did credit the creators it would still be illegal.

You see, that's the thing: It's not 'bad' or 'morally incorrect' to use open source code like this, it's straight up illegal with a lot of precedents. But yeah, it's proabbly not goin anywhere in this case in particular.

As for why the port shop used the tool instead an official CriWare tool: the tool on github might have worked better. Maybe the official tool was obtuse and the documentation only in Japanese, who knows.

To everyone that pointed out to me that no license means pretty protective license: thanks! Learned something new today. I do suppose that by uploading it to github the author's intent was to share it with anybody, but that's an assumption.

Yeah it often happens that the author intents to share and just puts no licensing info. However, by default it is pretty restrictive licensing like as when you would put a photo online you don't need to put licensing info to keep people from using your photos for other things.

But is definitely is sloppy to use unlicensed work, it is a big risk to do so.

As for why the port shop used the tool instead an official CriWare tool: the tool on github might have worked better. Maybe the official tool was obtuse and the documentation only in Japanese, who knows.

To everyone that pointed out to me that no license means pretty protective license: thanks! Learned something new today. I do suppose that by uploading it to github the author's intent was to share it with anybody, but that's an assumption.

In an ideal, logical world? No. In the real world, where narrative often boils down to "corporations" vs "fans"? You bet your ass it colors the conversation. The title makes it seem as if the Catherine port uses something made specifically for Catherine, by Catherine fans, and taking advantage of their hard work. In truth it's a generic tool for Criware video extraction.

Yeah it often happens that the author intents to share and just puts no licensing info. However, by default it is pretty restrictive licensing like as when you would put a photo online you don't need to put licensing info to keep people from using your photos for other things.

This wouldn't case any legal issues because of Waifu2x's licencing agreement, but it does paint an interesting picture of the development of this port, that the original art assets were not available/they found it more convenient to upscale the art through an external program for whatever reason.

Atlus not following proper licensing procedure is amateurish but whatever. The developer doesn't seem to mind so I don't see why anyone else should mind either.

As for why Atlus chose to use an open source tool rather than official criware tools, who knows. There could be any number of reasons. Maybe the open source tool is just better and more convenient. Maybe they don't know very much about the official tools. Maybe they have a hard time communicating with Atlus Japan. Software development is hard, and I have sympathy for them.

Seriously, it is amateurish at best, they basically used a reverse engineering tool to get the Criware assets they should have total access in the first place, they are not some anonymous modders in the internetz. On the top of that they leave the tool in the game folder -___-

As a professional (non-game) developer, I think this is very much a mountain being made out of what is barely a molehill. Nothing about this genuinely reflects on their technical competence.

The licensing thing is maybe a potential issue in the theoretical sense (for the owner of the Github repo mostly, not really Atlus/Sega/the developer), that's about it, and it's certainly not wrong or immoral to use publicly-available code, unless the license explicitly places restrictions on how you use it.

In an ideal, logical world? No. In the real world, where narrative often boils down to "corporations" vs "fans"? You bet your ass it colors the conversation. The title makes it seem as if the Catherine port uses something made specifically for Catherine, by Catherine fans, and taking advantage of their hard work. In truth it's a generic tool for Criware video extraction.

Good. Hopefully SEGA keeps forcing the issue, until the stupid old men at Atlus are blue in the face and give up on whatever asinine ideals compel them to make 3rd party exclusives without funding from the system holder.

As a professional (non-game) developer, I think this is very much a mountain being made out of what is barely a molehill. Nothing about this genuinely reflects on their technical competence.

The licensing thing is maybe a potential issue in the theoretical sense (for the owner of the Github repo mostly, not really Atlus/Sega/the developer), that's about it, and it's certainly not wrong or immoral to use publicly-available code, unless the license explicitly places restrictions on how you use it.

Actually it's just the opposite. I'am also a professional programmer (non-gaming) and unless you really love lawsuits you shouldn't use any code that's isn't explicitly licensed in a way that can cover your ass.

This is sloppy and unprofessional. Doesn't really matter and this specific case, but in many other settings (this is really prevalent in big-tech corporations) this would be a very expensive lawsuit. The company I've has been sued before because of sloppy use of open source code as if it's 'free to use in every case' when it very much isn't.

Atlus not following proper licensing procedure is amateurish but whatever. The developer doesn't seem to mind so I don't see why anyone else should mind either.

As for why Atlus chose to use an open source tool rather than official criware tools, who knows. There could be any number of reasons. Maybe the open source tool is just better and more convenient. Maybe they don't know very much about the official tools. Maybe they have a hard time communicating with Atlus Japan. Software development is hard, and I have sympathy for them.

There seem to be two separate issues here: the legality of including the source code of a tool Sega/Atlus/TEA doesn't own the rights or license to, which is a technical/procedural concern; and the implications of the porting team using off-the-shelf third-party software to unpack and uprez game assets, which points to a quick and dirty port where quality doesn't seem to have been as high a priority as we'd like.

I feel like the legal issue is important to SEGA/Atlus/TEA and the creators of the third-party tool, but I don't know that it really affects anyone here. The latter concern, that this points to the porting process being done on the cheap with very little support from the original developers/publishers, concerns me more. Especially given that other Sega PC ports have been decent to great, it does raise questions about why Catherine is the way it is.

It seems pretty telling to me that for many people the response is either pitchforks or feeling indignant that this is even being spoken about. As for the news itself even if the developer be is cool with it I think this is pretty side eye worthy that a shortcut like this was even necessary in the first place and it's a little annoying that people are going all Bethesda as if their experience matters in the greater context of how the game generally performs .

I definitely didn't read the original title as "Catherine fans". That said, this weird description of "fans" as anyone who contributes something not for profit definitely doesn't sit well with me and I'm happy the title was changed.

It seems pretty telling to me that for many people the response is either pitchforks or feeling indignant that this is even being spoken about. As for the news itself even if the developer be is cool with it I think this is pretty side eye worthy that a shortcut like this was even necessary in the first place and it's a little annoying that people are going all Bethesda as if their experience matters in the greater context of how the game generally performs .

The thing is, there's so many potential reasons why this could have been used that I don't think we can really get much from it. The original tool might have had awful/nonexistent English documentation for all we know.

However, given they have also used Waifu2x to upscale their art assets, I am led to believe that maybe the porting house didn't have high resolution assets and only were given whatever were in the original release. Atlus Japan almost definitely would've had high res assets at some point I would've imagined, so maybe there was a breakdown in communication there but whatever.